Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

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A Chance to Protest in Colorado

If you’re in Colorado, especially in the Colorado Springs area, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation could use your help. This Friday they’re planning a protest at the Air Force Academy over the academy’s promotion of homophobic and misogynistic websites to their staff. You can get all the details at their website. Here’s the background:

The website in question is “Judaism 101,” or www.jewfaq.org, which bills itself as an “online encyclopedia of Judaism.” While the website contains information about various Jewish holidays, content on the site also indicates virulently homophobic and misogynistic prejudices presented as mainstream “traditional” Judaism. MRFF sprang into action after being contacted by numerous USAFA cadets, faculty members, and staff, including 21 lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) personnel who reached out to MRFF after links to the site were circulated in a “Notice to Airmen” (NOTAM) of Religious Accommodations.

According to Weinstein, “an equivalent move would be to link the descriptions of Christian holidays… to the website of Pastor Fred Phelps’ utterly despicable Westboro Baptist Church! The material… includes suggestions that homosexual males should be put to death as per the Torah. Additionally, it includes a speciously hideous comparison of the originating cause of homosexuality to that of kleptomania. This disgrace is an open slap in the face to all lesbian, gay, and bisexual USAFA cadets, faculty, and staff. Additionally, the website contains the absurd and perverse notion that males who masturbate should have their hands chopped off.”

Additionally, the website states that women’s social status under Judaism is that they are “separate but equal,” a statement that typically stipulates the polar opposite of any modern, democratic conception of “equality.”

Comments

Except that aren’t those things true? That the Torah suggests that homosexuals be executed, or that women are considered separate but equal? Isn’t the problem really with exposing the extremes of the Bible?

Those things are NOT true, unless you define truth as “matching a strictly logical reading of cherry-picked verses”. You know, the way the least sane fundamentalists of any religion do it. The links are a way to attack Judaism and non-straight sex at the same time. (I’ll concede the separate-but-equal-women thing as a problem with Judaism that isn’t exactly restricted to the lunatic fringe. Like the separate-but-nowhere-near-equal status of women in, oh dammit, it was just on the tip of my tongue . . .)